Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/53

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to the most indispensable commentary on Pindar. It cannot be said that he has been neglected in recent times. Since the monumental labours of A. Boeckh, the edition of Dissen, and Bergk's in his Poetae Lyrici, we have had from Germany Tycho Mommsen's edition (1869), and more lately the recension by W. Christ in Teubner's series; since J. W. Donaldson's edition and Paley's translation, England has had the version in which Mr Ernest Myers shows so fine a sympathy with Pindar's spirit, and the able edition of the Olympian and Pythian Odes by Mr Fennell. In offering the following notes to the readers of this Journal, my object is merely to contribute something, however little, to a closer appreciation of a poet whose charm gains on those who endeavour to see him more clearly in his relation to the life of his day, to its thought and art, and, above all, to the art which he had made his own.

§ 2. The spirit of Pindar's poetry is Panhellenic. This is, indeed, a part of its essence. At Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, Corinth, Greeks of all cities were brought into sympathy by rites and beliefs common to all. Pindar is highly skilled in the treatment of local myths or cults, appropriate to the particular victory. But a sure instinct ever prompts him to link these interests of the individual city with topics which appeal to the religious sense or ancestral pride of the whole Hellenic name. The triumph which had owed its opportunity to the conception